For city officials in Ellsworth and Portland, being tasked with conforming to Maine’s landmark housing law was an opportunity to do more than come into compliance. It was a chance to make transformative land use reforms.
The legislation signed into law by Gov. Janet Mills last year, L.D. 2003, required Maine municipalities to adopt standards around affordable housing, permitted residential uses and accessory dwelling units. Those included allowing more than one unit to be built on any lot already zoned for single-family housing and permitting additional density for affordable housing developments in a community’s “growth” areas.
The aim of the overhaul was to increase housing, and a study conducted as part of it found that Maine needs to nearly double annual housing production through 2030 to fix historic underproduction and meet expected population growth.
Cities and towns with a council-style government had to conform to the law’s standards by Jan 1, 2024. Municipalities governed by town meetings have until July 1.
The new legislation has been contentious, particularly in southern Maine communities with the state’s strictest housing laws. But Ellsworth and Portland emerged as cities that marshaled wide support for ordinances going beyond the law’s requirements.
In Portland, the city council finalized a large set of changes in December that will allow four units plus two accessory dwellings on all mainland single-family lots. Policymakers also aimed to increase density by exempting the first four units in residential projects from off-street parking requirements.
These standards are the result of months of advocacy from city planners and Portland residents, but notably, too, of a coalition between groups that often oppose each other in city politics, including the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Maine chapter of Democratic Socialists of America.
To Quincy Hentzel, CEO of the regional chamber, going beyond L.D. 2003’s base requirements to promote more housing in Portland was a no-brainer. The future of Maine’s workforce counted on city officials doing more, she said.
“You honestly cannot have a conversation with any employer, regardless of industry or size, who is not having challenges with their employees finding affordable places to live, and it’s really, it’s been a huge challenge in a city like Portland,” she said. “We really need to recruit people from all over to come to Maine, but if you can’t find housing for people, they just cannot move here.”
Limited land availability in Portland has long been a barrier to developing housing there, Hentzel said. Allowing fourplexes to be built in any lot zoned as residential is a “modest” step forward, but it will increase housing opportunities in the city, she said.
Maximizing existing residential lots was, in part, the legislative intent behind L.D. 2003, according to testimony from the bill’s sponsor, former Speaker of the Maine House Representatives Ryan Fecteau.
“[The environmental community] appreciate the proposals in this bill because they promote density and infill in land already zoned for housing,” Fecteau testified in March last year.
In Ellsworth, city planner Matt Williams took implementing L.D. 2003 as an opportunity not only to promote denser, infill development in growth areas, he accompanied those changes with restrictions to short-term rentals in Ellsworth.
Both Ellsworth and Portland already had ordinances on the books that conformed to a few of L.D. 2003’s requirements, such as allowing accessory dwelling units to be built on single-family residential lots. But sometimes, accessory dwelling units can be built as investment properties and leased out as short-term rentals, which take up a “significant portion” of Ellsworth’s available housing stock for year-round residents, Williams said.
To regulate short-term rentals as the rules governing accessory dwelling units become more permissive, Williams created an ordinance stating that for the first 10 years after someone builds an accessory dwelling unit as a result of L.D. 2003, they cannot rent it out for fewer than 28 days.
“It has to be a year-round rental to help with [or] potentially offset some of the housing shortage, and not just encouraging development for a vacation rental,” he said.
These bold changes alone won’t be enough to make housing affordable in Ellsworth and Portland, city officials said. But opening up single-family lots to accommodate additional units and incentivizing affordable housing construction will help alleviate the acute housing shortage in those cities.
“To even modestly increase housing, at this stage, we will take whatever housing we can get,” said Hentzel.
All municipalities are on track to conform to L.D. 2003 by their respective January and July deadlines, according to Rebecca Graham, a senior legislative advocate at Maine Municipal Association. However, MMA does not track where each community is in that process, and there is no enforcement mechanism if a municipality does not conform, Graham said.